JEAN-JACQUES GAUTIER NPM SYMPOSIUM 2016 Objectives Part 2: NPMs and the SPT • Discuss among peers about the main challenges for NPMs in carrying out their preventive mandate with regard to the issues addressed during Part 1. National Preventive Mechanisms (NPM) established under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) have the mandate to monitor all places of deprivation of liberty, including public or private psychiatric institutions where persons are held and treated involuntarily. • Exchange working methods to develop NPMs skills in monitoring psychiatric institutions. This Symposium will therefore focus on psychiatric institutions, understood as any public or private health establishment • Strengthen cooperation providing medical treatment among NPMs and with to persons with mental or the SPT. intellectual impairments (e.g. psychiatric hospitals, psychiatric wards in general hospitals, secure units/hospitals or other places that are de facto psychiatric institutions). Symposium Organisation The September 2016 meeting is the third of a series of Jean-Jacques Gautier Symposiums. The Symposium is an international forum, unique in its kind, allowing the exchange of knowledge and practices between NPMs and other experts on the issue of vulnerabilities in detention. In 2014, the first symposium focused on the vulnerability of children in detention.18 The second edition looked at the situation of LGBT persons deprived of their liberty. This third edition will address the issues and challenges related to deprivation of liberty and human rights violations in psychiatric institutions. Participants at this event will include around fifteen NPMs from all regions of the world, as well as representatives from regional and international monitoring bodies (including the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture, SPT) and other international experts with extensive knowledge of the issue. The limited number of 18 54 The outcome reports of the first and second Jean-Jacques Gautier Symposiums are available here: http://www.apt.ch/en/jean-jacques-gautier-npm-symposium/